Japanese ClimateTech startup Asuene announced on Monday that it has established a subsidiary called Asuzero Singapore. The company will provide the Asuzero GHG (green house gas) emission management platform as well as one-stop service to companies in the region for their decarbonization effort.
Asuzero was established in October 2019 by Kohei Nishiwada, who previously worked for Mitsui & Co. on renewable energy-related projects around the world. The company offers Asuene and Asuzero. Asuene offers clean power that enables 100% renewable energy, local production for local consumption, and cost reduction while Asuzero is a cloud service that visualizes CO₂ emissions and enables carbon offsets.
To date, the company has secured approximately 2.9 billion yen (about $20 million US) in funding. Pavillion Capital under Temasek Holdings, Singapore’s state-run investment firm, and Axiom Asia, a private equity fund focused on the Asia-Pacific region, invested in the company in a Series B round this year. At the time of the funding, the company unveiled that it would start its Asian expansion.
Tokyo-based Meleap, the Japanese startup offering the Hado Augmented Reality-powered sports in 39 countries, announced on Monday that it has secured 510 million yen (about $3.5 million US) in the latest round. The round is led by Shanghai-based QC Investment with participation from Incubate Fund, Horipro Group Holdings, Kiraboshi Capital, CiP Fund (managed by Eltes, Tokyu Land Corporation, Kajima Corporation, and East Investment Capital GP), and Waki Planning. This follows an investment from Interwars last December. In November last year, the company concluded a business and capital alliance with Horipro to create the “Talent League” (teams comprising of TV personalities as players) while having secured funds from Incubate Fund several times in the past. The latest round brought the company’s funding sum up to 2.2 billion yen ($15 million US). They will use the funds to accelerate its global expansion, market the Talent League, and strengthen its recruitment efforts. Hiroshi Fukuda (current CEO of Meleap), previously of Recruit, and Hitoshi Araki (current CTO of Meleap), previously of Fujitsu, established Meleap in 2014. The company has developed AR games that allow players to perform moves similar to the Kamehameha and Hadouken waves we have seen in animation series, and has 109…
Image credit: Meleap
Tokyo-based Meleap, the Japanese startup offering the Hado Augmented Reality-powered sports in 39 countries, announced on Monday that it has secured 510 million yen (about $3.5 million US) in the latest round. The round is led by Shanghai-based QC Investment with participation from Incubate Fund, Horipro Group Holdings, Kiraboshi Capital, CiP Fund (managed by Eltes, Tokyu Land Corporation, Kajima Corporation, and East Investment Capital GP), and Waki Planning.
This
follows an investment from Interwars last December. In November last
year, the company concluded a business and capital alliance with Horipro
to create the “Talent League” (teams comprising of TV personalities as
players) while having secured funds from Incubate Fund several times in
the past. The latest round brought the company’s funding sum up to 2.2
billion yen ($15 million US). They will use the funds to accelerate its
global expansion, market the Talent League, and strengthen its
recruitment efforts.
Hiroshi Fukuda (current CEO of Meleap), previously of Recruit, and Hitoshi Araki (current CTO of Meleap), previously of Fujitsu, established Meleap in 2014. The company has developed AR games that allow players to perform moves similar to the Kamehameha and Hadouken waves we have seen in animation series, and has 109 directly managed and permanent franchise locations in 39 countries that embody these games as sports. The company has a cumulative total of 3.5 million players and more than 100 million households watching the game. In addition, the Talent League, launched in 2020, allows viewers to cheer on players through the Wow Live app.
Tokyo-based Frame00 (pronounced ‘frame double oh’), the Japanese startup behind a blockchain-based monetization service for OSS (Open Source Software) developers called Dev Protocol, announced on Wednesday, that it has secured 250 million yen (about $1.7 million US) in a pre-series A round. For the company, this follows their seed round in June of 2022 and brought their funding sum up to about 310 million yen (about $2.1 million). This round was led by former MIT Media Lab director Joi Ito-led web3 fund gmjp with participation from B Dash Ventures, SKY Perfect JSAT (TSE:9412), rikka, and 01Booster Capital. Mayumi Hara, CEO of Frame00, is expected to speak at the New Context Conference 2022 Fall to be organized by Digital Garage (TSE:4819) next month. Joi is the co-founder of Digital Garage. In aim to support the prosperity of OSS and the sustainability of community management, FRAME00 has been developing Dev, a protocol for sharing revenue with OSS developers. Dev tokens are redeemable for Ethereum tokens on crypto exchanges. Since its mainnet launch in 2020, the protocol has attracted new financial support for OSS developers around the world. They won the CJK (China, Japan, Korea) OSS Special Contribution Award at the North-East Asia…
Clubs Image credit: Frame00
Tokyo-based Frame00 (pronounced ‘frame double oh’), the Japanese startup behind a blockchain-based monetization service for OSS (Open Source Software) developers called Dev Protocol, announced on Wednesday, that it has secured 250 million yen (about $1.7 million US) in a pre-series A round. For the company, this follows their seed round in June of 2022 and brought their funding sum up to about 310 million yen (about $2.1 million).
This round was led by former MIT Media Lab director Joi Ito-led web3 fund gmjp with participation from B Dash Ventures, SKY Perfect JSAT (TSE:9412), rikka, and 01Booster Capital. Mayumi Hara, CEO of Frame00, is expected to speak at the New Context Conference 2022 Fall to be organized by Digital Garage (TSE:4819) next month. Joi is the co-founder of Digital Garage.
In aim to support the prosperity of OSS and the sustainability of community management, FRAME00 has been developing Dev, a protocol for sharing revenue with OSS developers. Dev tokens are redeemable for Ethereum tokens on crypto exchanges.
Since its mainnet launch in 2020, the protocol has attracted new financial support for OSS developers around the world. They won the CJK (China, Japan, Korea) OSS Special Contribution Award at the North-East Asia Development Cooperation Forum last year.
Currently, the DEV protocol developer community has over 500 members. In response to the diversifying needs of the creator economy, including web3 and metaverse, the company will accelerate developing the Clubs no-code DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) tool. In September, the company set up a new office in Switzerland to comply with global regulatory and develop governance system.
See the original story in Japanese. Yokohama-based Willbox, the Japanese startup behind the Giho digital logistics platform, announced on Monday that it has secured about 700 million yen (about $4.7 million) in a series A round. This round is led by SMBC Venture Capital with participation from Mitsubishi UFJ Capital, Marubeni Ventures, Anobaka, Salesforce Ventures, Golden Asia Fund III, and Mizuhoo Capital. Golden Asia Fund is a joint venture between Japan’s Mitsubishi UFJ Capital and Industrial Technology Investment Corporation (ITIC), the investment arm of Taiwan’s Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI). For the logistics startup, this follows their pre-series A round announced in May, which was led by SMBC Venture Capital with participation from Mitsubishi UFJ Capital and Marubeni Ventures. Anobaka participated in their seed and pre-series A rounds as well. The company will use the funds to accelerate the development of its services to expand its customer base, as well as to enhance its operations in Japan and Taiwan. Willbox was founded in 2019 by Motonari Kami. His family has been running a Kawasaki-based company called Koei, which handles large-size packaging and logistics for heavy and precision machinery, for half a century. International logistics of large cargoes for heavy and…
Yokohama-based Willbox, the Japanese startup behind the Giho digital logistics platform, announced on Monday that it has secured about 700 million yen (about $4.7 million) in a series A round. This round is led by SMBC Venture Capital with participation from Mitsubishi UFJ Capital, Marubeni Ventures, Anobaka, Salesforce Ventures, Golden Asia Fund III, and Mizuhoo Capital. Golden Asia Fund is a joint venture between Japan’s Mitsubishi UFJ Capital and Industrial Technology Investment Corporation (ITIC), the investment arm of Taiwan’s Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI).
For the logistics startup, this
follows their pre-series A round announced in May, which was led by SMBC
Venture Capital with participation from Mitsubishi UFJ Capital and
Marubeni Ventures. Anobaka participated in their seed and pre-series A
rounds as well. The company will use the funds to accelerate the
development of its services to expand its customer base, as well as to
enhance its operations in Japan and Taiwan.
Willbox was founded in 2019 by Motonari Kami. His family has been running a Kawasaki-based company called Koei, which handles large-size packaging and logistics for heavy and precision machinery, for half a century. International logistics of large cargoes for heavy and precision machinery require packing in wooden crates before placing them in containers, and these crates are made by specialized craftsmen each time, according to the shape and size of the cargo. For this reason, unlike small cargo, it is not possible to immediately estimate shipping costs or decide on a carrier for the international logistics.
Willbox targets the area of FCL (Full Container Load), mainly for exports. 120 logistics companies are registered with Giho, of which about 20% are packing companies like Koei, and the rest are forwarders, shipping operators, and land transportation companies to ports. Logistics companies spend more than half of their time preparing quotations, but 80% of those quotations will be a waste because of lost orders. Willbox says that based on the information collected from logistics companies, the platform allows shippers to get quotes in about 10 seconds after the data input.
Fukuoka-based Postalk, the Japanese startup behind a card-based chat tool under the same name, launched the tool’s global edition supporting the English language on Thursday. The new edition was unveiled at the pitch competition at B Dash Camp 2022 Fall, one of Japan’s renowned semi-annual startup conference taking place in Fukuoka. This follows the launch of its original Japanese edition last year. Postalk was founded in May of 2018 by Yohei Kawano, co-founder of Technical Rockstars, as well as his former colleague developer Kiyohiko Hirama. Technical Rockstars was acquired by TSE-listed cloud service provider Uhuru and then shut down the Milkcocoa service in 2016. See also: Japan’s noBackend development platform Milkcocoa now eases IoT and M2M integration Japanese startup aims to eliminate database management drudgery for developers The platform was born out of their experience at Technical Rockstars where their team members were forced to work apart each other between Fukuoka and Tokyo. Although web apps such as Google Hangout and Google Docs existed at the time, they have many challenges in creating a team work environment in a distance. The platform allows sharing issues and to-dos within the team in a way like sticky notes being put on the…
Image credit: Postalk
Fukuoka-based Postalk, the Japanese startup behind a card-based chat tool under the same name, launched the tool’s global edition supporting the English language on Thursday. The new edition was unveiled at the pitch competition at B Dash Camp 2022 Fall, one of Japan’s renowned semi-annual startup conference taking place in Fukuoka. This follows the launch of its original Japanese edition last year.
Postalk was founded in May of 2018 by Yohei Kawano, co-founder of Technical Rockstars, as well as his former colleague developer Kiyohiko Hirama. Technical Rockstars was acquired by TSE-listed cloud service provider Uhuru and then shut down the Milkcocoa service in 2016.
The
platform was born out of their experience at Technical Rockstars where
their team members were forced to work apart each other between Fukuoka
and Tokyo. Although web apps such as Google Hangout and Google Docs
existed at the time, they have many challenges in creating a team work
environment in a distance. The platform allows sharing issues and
to-dos within the team in a way like sticky notes being put on the
whiteboard.
Various SaaS platforms have been created as remote
work has become the norm. After his former company’s exit, Kawano, a
tech geek himself, had the opportunity to staff a startup community in
Fukuoka where he became acutely aware that the startup community is not
necessarily composed solely of tech geeks.
Postalk CEO & Co-founder Yohei Kawano
Kawano says,
When you’re in Tokyo’s Shibuya, it’s commonplace to be able to use Zoom, Slack, and maybe even GitHub. But after coming back to Fukuoka, I found out that it’s quite different. It’s not good to have only people who like geeky things, and it’s hard to work with non-geeks if you only use existing tools. I realized that the tools need to be more open.
According
to Kawano, there are many SaaS tools out there that are designed for
tech geeks, such as drawing tools and Kanban-style task management
tools, which are still difficult for less tech-savvy people to
understand. The Postalk platform allows users to simply paste and
arrange cards, and if there is a URL, the OGP image can be also
displayed. It is used by universities and other organizations for
gathering opinions and communicating plans during events.
Postalk
reproduces an interesting pay-as-you-go model in which fees are
determined by the size of the whiteboard shared. The company is still
considering several issues to be addressed in order to have the plaform
actively adopted by companies. In the future, they are considering
developing a mobile app, linking it with Zoom and Slack, and adding a
function that would allow voice input of in-person meetings and comm
calls.
The Fukuoka company secured 22.5 million yen (about $210,000 in the exchange rate at the time) in a pre-seed round last year from two local Fukuoka VC firms – Dorgan Beta and FGN ABBALab
Tokyo-based Base Food, developing and selling nutritionally complete food products, announced on Wednesday that its IPO application to list on the Tokyo Stock Exchange had been approved. The company will be listed on the TSE Growth Market on November 15 with plans to offer 2,723,100 shares for public subscription and to sell 961,000 shares in over-allotment options for a total of 3,684,200 shares. The underwriting will be led by Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities while Base Food’s ticker code will be 2936. Based on the company’s estimated issue price is 950 yen (about $6.5) per share, its market cap is approximately 48.3 billion yen (about $329 million). Its share price range will be released on October 28 with bookbuilding scheduled to start on October 31 and pricing on November 4. The final public offering price will be determined on November 7. According to its consolidated statement as of February of 2022, the company posted revenue of 5.55 billion yen ($37.8 million) with an ordinary loss of 461 million yen ($3.1 million). Base Food is the food-tech startup founded in April of 2016 by Shun Hashimoto, formerly engaged in the autonomous driving business at DeNA. The company develops and sells Base…
Image credit: Base Food
Tokyo-based Base Food, developing and selling nutritionally complete food products, announced on Wednesday that its IPO application to list on the Tokyo Stock Exchange had been approved. The company will be listed on the TSE Growth Market on November 15 with plans to offer 2,723,100 shares for public subscription and to sell 961,000 shares in over-allotment options for a total of 3,684,200 shares. The underwriting will be led by Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities while Base Food’s ticker code will be 2936.
Based on the company’s estimated issue price is 950 yen (about $6.5) per share, its market cap is approximately 48.3 billion yen (about $329 million). Its share price range will be released on October 28 with bookbuilding scheduled to start on October 31 and pricing on November 4. The final public offering price will be determined on November 7. According to its consolidated statement as of February of 2022, the company posted revenue of 5.55 billion yen ($37.8 million) with an ordinary loss of 461 million yen ($3.1 million).
Base Food is the food-tech startup founded in April of 2016 by Shun Hashimoto, formerly engaged in the autonomous driving business at DeNA. The company develops and sells Base Bread, Base Pasta, and Base Cookies through its e-commerce site as well as other e-commerce sites and wholesale to retailers. In February, they had over 100,000 users receiving products every four weeks on a subscription basis.
Led by CEO Hashimoto (34.27%), the company’s major shareholders include Global Brain (23.31% through two funds), Rakuten Capital (8.13%), XTech Ventures (4.07%), angel investor Yutaka Kaneko (3.51%), employee Takafumi Shimada, director Ryuta Saito, and director Yosuke Yamamoto (2.32% for each), and The Fund (2.05%).
The Bridge
Masaru Ikeda
